A Teacher and Student Have a Heated Discussion on The N-Word

A black student at Louisiana’s top public high school got into a heated exchange with a white, male substitute teacher on Thursday over his ease in using the N-word.

“That’s racist as sh*t! Why can you not understand that it’s racist for a white man to say ‘nigger’ to a black man? It’s f**king racist,” the student at Ben Franklin High in New Orleans told the permanent sub in one of several videos of the exchange posted online.

The student then asked a white classmate if he’d ever say the n-word. The teen rhetorically asks the entire class if they would say it.

“F**k, no, they wouldn’t say ‘nigger,’” he tells the teacher.

The sub continues to assert his right to use the word, explaining that the epithet has been “commoditized.”

“It’s a word that’s used so many times that it doesn’t mean its original meaning,” the teacher tells the student. “The word has been commoditized so that anyone can use it, and it’s not a negative connotation.”

Later, the teacher tells the student, “You cannot go through life and act like a word can affect you.”

Watch below:

Several students identified the teacher on social media as Coach Ryan. Principal Patrick Widhalm would not confirm, but said the school does have a full-time employee by that name.

After class, students walked to the principal’s office with plans to stage a sit-in. Instead, an impromptu, hour-long assembly about the incident took place in the auditorium.

Students from various backgrounds had “a very good dialogue about the difficulties and the issues that still exist around race, around identity, around the things that aren’t resolved,” Widhalm said.